And the accusations are flying. Kaliya today announced that the representatives of the Identity Commons in the Liberty Alliance-initiated talks about a new, joint identity organization are withdrawing. She said:

We (Mary, Kaliya, Drummond) do not believe the proposed organization accomplishes the goals Identity Commons was formed to achieve. We do not see how we can influence the conversation going forward to move in a direction more compatible with IC's aims. For this reason, we (Mary, Kaliya, Drummond) wish to withdraw formally...

I'll stay out of contributing to the fingerpointing. But I'd like to say that I'm not surprised.

At the end of the day, it was always difficult to see how that merger could have worked. In my mind, Liberty Alliance is one of the last successful, traditional, industrial-age industry standards organizations in the software world; Identity Commons is, well, it's difficult to describe because it is such an un-organization and definitely 21st century. Perhaps it's best to describe as everything that Liberty is not. (Or none that Liberty is).

Corporate mergers more often fail over culture than over anything else, and this looks just the same. If you read through the finger pointing, it's all about culture and none over the gory details that had a reasonable chance of getting sorted out.

What now? Well, for starters, what about we just keep the organizations that we have, and collaborate where there are mutual benefits? In my book, there is nothing wrong with having multiple industry organizations in an early market such as identity, each focusing on promoting their point of view.

Let a thousand flowers bloom. Coincidentally exactly the point of view of the un-organized Identity Commons...